


Death and the Maiden

by Elefwin



Category: Hellboy (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2511716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elefwin/pseuds/Elefwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>we all fight alone, faerie are islands too. written for cliche_bingo's <i>episode tags and missing scenes</i> prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death and the Maiden

Nuala, daughter of Balor, princess of the faerie, considered death. She was in the right place to do so, for in Bethmoora _everything_ died. Even the air... Ages ago the sky above the city had turned to stone, and its air – to dust. Everything lost its meaning, purpose and sense but the gold – pure, terrible, deadly gold. She could not bear to stay down there a moment longer. Her brother could. Drunk on hope and despair, he prowled the sunken city with a grim joy. Thankfully, he did not try to make her join him. Thus she sat on a rock between pale sky and angry sea, in her beautiful blue dress, with her lonely thoughts, dying. Slower than below, much more slow, but surely.

Breeze touched her face, started to weave her hair into a crown, and died away, leaving a faint warm breath of rot behind. Even here, through folds of twisted stone and time, it crept. She wondered how far. Could it quietly poison and swallow all before anyone took notice? Nuala stared at her hands, bone-thin, bone-white, weak, and felt blood freeze solid gold in her veins. Anyone but him. Not Nuada, who took each wound dealt to their world as his own. She wanted to be strong for him, but where he sought hope she found only dread. Very soon bleeding world would fall into her twig-like hands, and she could not – for all her love and royal blood, – could not promise to heal it. She never held a sword, never took a life, but she knew how. Now she was mortally afraid she no longer knew how to _give_. Too long she's been dying!

Yet she wanted to live. 

As though summoned by longing and thought, Nuada appeared by her side. He did not touch her, did not say a word, and his presence was bitter, unyielding... but it warmed her at the world's end. Seeing him in daylight was strange. Their people were creatures of dusk and night, and it had never mattered until the children of men took the sun from them. And now the light and the breeze touched her brother like a stranger in a strange land, like they would unravel him, strand by strand of scarlet and black and blood golden...

"Brother mine, is your heart turning to gold too?"

"Ha!"

He was afraid then, her brother who would not call himself king, who would stand alone against all foes if such be fate. Nuada Silver Lance was afraid of something that had nothing to do with the battle to come, and she could no longer see into his heart.

"Do you want to die?" He looked at her then, with a smile and stolen sunlight in his eyes. 

It was a honest question, not a threat. It was a promise: if she said yes he would let her. He would abandon it all: his dream, his war, his life – if she honestly wanted to die…

"No," she said, and felt the chilly dread no more. They could never be one again, and they could never, despite their father's best intentions, be apart, bound by a link stronger than blood, will and time. And she, against all reason, wanted to live.

"Come then, sister. Our guests will be here soon."

She took Nuada's hand and followed, long September day lingering like a pale mantle about her – a strange thing to take below, a strange last memory of her land to keep.

Because Nuala did not want to die, she just might have to.


End file.
